David McElroy

Almost nothing is left of all the things I felt so certain about when I was young.

It’s not just that I didn’t know as much as I thought I knew. It’s worse. What I’ve slowly realized is that much of what I knew at the time — even that which I was certain about — was wrong. I’ve had to unlearn many of those things.

In some ways, it would have been easier if I had simply been ignorant. If I don’t know something, there’s an empty space where truth can eventually fit. I can learn something new and fill in what I didn’t know before.

But when I already “know” something that isn’t true, there’s no empty space. The space is already occupied by something false.

And that false belief changes the way I understand everything else.

I can look directly at evidence that ought to tell me I’m wrong and find some way to explain it away. (I’m really good at that.) I can encounter something that ought to be obvious and fail to see it because it doesn’t fit what I already “know.” I can spend years trying to make new pieces of truth fit into an old framework that was wrong from the beginning.

Sometimes we can’t learn the truth until we first unlearn the falsehood that makes the truth seem impossible.

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If you’re worried about artificial intelligence taking your job, maybe you’re doing a job that humans don’t really need to be doing.

AI software is great at a lot of things that humans don’t do very well or don’t do very efficiently. It can also save humans a lot of time by doing things we would rather not do.

For instance, I have ChatGPT proof my writing for typos and other style errors. It often saves me from looking foolish with careless mistakes, but it sometimes makes suggestions that are laughably ridiculous.

You see, software has no idea what I’m trying to achieve, with my life or my writing. Software has no ideas of its own. Software has no judgment. Software has no taste.

What’s more, the software knows this. It has “read” dozens of my essays, so it has come to see patterns in what I write. It’s smart enough to recognize that, but that doesn’t mean it could do the same on its own.

I asked ChatGPT what difference a reader would notice between one of my essays and an essay that it might write. Here’s the response:

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I started my life full of hope. I believed people were good and that my future was bright.

The world was some sort of ideal and rational place, at least in my mind. I learned to believe — in a way that isn’t clear to me anymore — that intelligence and hard work were always rewarded. I believed most other people were decent and well-meaning. They shared my values.

Somewhere along the way, I absorbed an unspoken promise about life.

If I was intelligent enough and worked hard enough and developed whatever gifts I had, there would be a place for me. The world would value what I had to offer. I would find people who shared my values. I would love and be loved.

I would find where I belonged. Nobody ever stated the promise quite that way. But I believed it.

Living an adult life is nothing like what my childhood led me to expect.

I’ve discovered that high intelligence is often a handicap, not a ticket to success. Shallow hearts and dishonest actions are often rewarded instead. Most of all, I’ve come to see that most people don’t share my values. They’re not much like me.

I see us as a shallow and unhappy culture which has focused so much on material advancement that we’ve overlooked the spiritual and emotional elements which are ultimately more important.

And I have become bitterly disappointed about all of this.

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